Page 312 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Chapter 5. Cortana, Your Voice

Assistant

Cortana is a crisply accurate, uncomplaining, voice-commanded servant.
No voice training or special syntax is required. You can say, “Wake me up
at 7:45” or “How do I get to the airport?” or “What’s the weather going to

be like in San Francisco this weekend?” or “What’s 453 divided by 4?” or
“Turn off the PC” or even “What’s the meaning of life?”

You can ask questions about sports, news, weather, math, history, and much

more. Each time, Cortana shows you the answer, fetched from the internet
(and usually speaks it, too). She also lets you control, by voice, many

brands of smart-home thermostats, light bulbs, door locks, and so on.

Older speech-recognition systems work only if you issue certain limited
commands with predictable syntax, like, “Call 445-2340” or “Open

Microsoft Word.” But Cortana has been programmed to respond to casual
speech, normal speech. It doesn’t matter if you say, “What’s the weather
going to be like in Tucson this weekend?” or “Give me the Tucson weather
for this weekend” or “Will I need an umbrella in Tucson?” Cortana

understands almost any variation.

And she understands regular, everyday speaking. You don’t have to separate
your words or talk weirdly; you just speak normally.

Now, it’s not Star Trek. You can’t ask Cortana to clean your gutters or to
teach you French. (Well, you can ask. Anytime she doesn’t have an answer
for you, she opens up your web browser and displays the Bing search

results for your question.)

But, as you’ll soon discover, the number of things she can do for you is
impressive. Furthermore, Microsoft keeps adding to Cortana’s intelligence

through software updates.